Robert Farrell

One hears and moves toward it. One moves, but is Not in it, what does not Keep but flowers forth. We aren’t it. It is What lets the sky appear, The sunrise rise to site a circle in Hills whose rocks refuse toRecognize themselves in us. It’s good they Let us be. It’s why we’reHere. And certain there is play and kinship When children jump, and sheep,Or bells take wing from ice cream trucks. Here it Is, in hills that ring theRinging rocks and us, in walls that ward, not As fences that enclose Parks, but as a windbreak protects the field Or olive trees the grape-Filled vine. We’re free to roam. It’s our right to Amble out beyond the Gate. Not nature but valor sustains it, Yet much depends upon Conditions. Young shoots need water and fruits Are only proved on tongues.They flourish then are gone. An everyday Struggle it is to standAnd breathe and, in the breathing, live. There is Nothing stranger. We areTourists. It is a wandering thing. So Many pictures that we Wonder what will nourish us, what it is, And where we’ll go to find Our rocks and what to build, how we’ll know Our arts will yield the strength We need to harden hearts to fear but not To love. Benny Rothman Once touched it in 1932 when He stood atop Kinder Scout with four hundred fellow ramblers, Rothman, The child of immigrants(Romanian Jews), a boy who left school Despite the place he’d wonAt fourteen (his son would study science And get a PhD).The family needed money. He was then An errand boy. Later He’d build a bike from parts he scrounged from scrap. It was on that bike he Rode from Manchester to Wales, there to hike Up Snowdon. It was his First time in the mountains and he tasted Freedom there, traced a kindOf Sunday feeling, for on the weekend A working man could walk.There were camping clubs and CP outings Where the poor and joblessWould converse about the villains who stole The common from the goose.But more they’d talk about the Duke who shot At grouse, the wooden liars,Or the keepers who warned them off the moors. A run-in with these thugsLed some men to plan a trespass on the Mountain in numbers tooGreat to stop. And so they came from Sheffield And from Manchester, twoGroups, to Kinder Scout, 2080 Odd feet above the sea,Its summit. But he lost heart, the scheduled Speaker, was frightened by The wardens and police on hand. They, too, Numbered high. It was thenRothman rose and spoke, the diminutive Mancunian (he was Under five feet tall), not in words like these That praise such deeds, but in Those that kindle courage. He went to jail For it and his arrestWould make it hard to find employment the Next four years. He fought theFascists in that time. Metro-Vicks would hire Him and he’d stay there. A Union leader, he strove for access to The land until his death. That such things are possible make them not To be forgotten. KnowThis: decisions can be unmade but we Can hold to beginnings. What founds us also finds. Above all, life Is trial. So let us leaveOur monumental selves and go, for when The sun is up our eyes Are sharp whereas by night our ears are best. There’s a conversation In the landscape once we hear it, once we Learn to move and be and Be in it, a question that’s asked again. Though it repeats it’s not The same but is as color is in light: It’s always there. Different, It’s a common wealth. Such gifts aren’t given Without gall to those who Want. The grass stretches to the hills. And Though the victory is Small why should we be silent? It’s true. Not Much has happened and we Have no harp. Yes, it’s quiet here but not Private, not remotely, For look, we’re here together. We’ve set out. We dance when chance offers And sleep well knowing the day’s work will be Hard. The golden cup? That’sBabylon. And though full of strife this time, Too, is beautiful. It Is not bad, just dangerous, but where danger Is there is also grace.

News

Culture Matters is pleased to announce that the second Bread and Roses Poetry Award, sponsored by Unite, is now open for entries. Details are as follows: Entries should consist of one original, previously unpublished poem, no more than 50 lines long. Entrants must be resident in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland Entry is free, and open to anyone regardless of trade union membership. There will be five prizes of £100 each; an award ceremony in Durham on 13 July linked to the Miners’ Gala, with travel and accommodation costs paid; and publication of all the outstanding poems in the 2018 anthology Entries should broadly deal with working class life, communities and culture. Themes might include work; the position and perspective of women; political issues of any kind; and art and culture. Entries should be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by midnight on Friday 8 June, or by post to Culture Matters, c/o 8 Moore Court, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE15 8QE. Please include your name, address, contact details and the poem in the body of the email. When emailing or posting submissions please provide your name, email or postal address, and phone number. All entries remain the copyright of the author but Culture Matters and Unite will have the right to publish them.

Arts hub

Culture Matters is pleased to announce that the second Bread and Roses Poetry Award, sponsored by Unite, is now open for entries. Details are as follows: Entries should consist of one original, previously unpublished poem, no more than 50 lines long. Entrants must be resident in the United Kingdom or…

our mother’s day will come by Fran Lock my mother’s face exists in the space between kaijū and sphinx. she’s wearing clothes that holdher body in contempt. her breath, imperfect peppermint. she has to go to work. her earringsare obols, shorn of their funerary usage. palestflirtation of dubious gold. unclaimed…

To mark IWD, we're publishing this poem from a new collection by Sheree Mack called skinshame, to be published shortly by Culture Matters.‘We’ll show you you’re a woman’ was the title of a report compiled by Human Rights Watch into the violence and discrimination experienced by black lesbians and transgender…

Fran Lock has curated this year’s compilation of poetry for Culture Matters, to mark International Women’s Day. There are poems by Jane Burn, Sogol Sur, Joanne Key, Julia Bell, Anne Pelleschi, Beri Allen-Miller, and Fran herself, ending with a prose piece, On Fighting the Disconnect. Introduction When you put out…

30 years ago at approx 3.30pm Mairéad Farrell was murdered by the British state on Gibraltar. Standing by her side, also with his hands in the air, was Dan McCann who was also shot dead. A few hundred metres away Sean Savage was to have a similar fate. At the…

An Unfortunate Case by Chris Norris Portugal’s president has described the circumstances in which a homeless Portuguese man died near the UK parliament as ‘inhumane’. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa paid tribute to the unnamed man found dead in an underpass near Westminster tube station, a stone’s throw from an entrance to…

Sanjiv Sachdev reviews an exhibition focusing on the influential, dangerous and subversive power of jazz. It is nearly a century since live Jazz came to Britain. Playing at the London Hippodrome in April 1919, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band first brought the music to these Isles, followed soon after by…

Jenny Farrell introduces the life and poetry of Maxim Gorky, who was born 150 years ago, and presents his poem Storm Petrel, prophesying revolution. Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, or Maxim Gorky, was born 28 March 1868 in Nizhny Novgorod (named Gorky,1932-1990), and died 14 June 1936. He was a Russian and…

Culture hub

Richard Clarke outlines how religion, like any other cultural activity, is capable of both promoting political and social liberation, and being manipulated and controlled by ruling classes who attempt – and very often succeed – in turning it into a force for conservatism. Most Marxists would say that it is…

Sam DeLeo offers an imaginative critique of contemporary American culture. Can the killing of a few sacred cows deliver us from our current bleak circumstances, and usher in a new morning? The free library box near our Denver apartment building is called the Little Free Library. It sits on a wooden post anchoring…

Conrad Landin introduces the AV Festival in Newcastle. When the AV Festival lost its funding in the latest round of Arts Council awards, there was little outcry in the national press. The fact that the festival is defiantly not London focused — connecting as it does north-east England with art…

Stephen Pritchard protests with a blog against the involvement of BAE Systems in the Great Exhibition of the North, and Keith Armstrong protests with a poem. This blog is a brief response to the artwashing of the Great Exhibition of the North, particularly the inclusion of BAE Systems as a…

Chi Onwurah MP made the following address at the opening of the biannual AV Festival in Newcastle upon Tyne recently. You know the mining institute is one of my favourite buildings in the city, built by engineers, enjoyed by everyone. But as I stand here with Rebecca opposite the picture gallery…

Peter Doran points to the way buddhist concepts are being corrupted by the commodifying pressures of capitalist culture, and outlines the ways in which true mindfulness practices can help us resist the growing demands of the 'attention economy'. Neoliberal capitalism is an advanced form of symbolic and material power. We…

In the second essay in the series, Roland Boer discusses the relationship between religion and capitalism. The essay is also available as an ebook, and is part of the Culture Matters mission to reclaim and liberate all aspects of our human culture. Our aim with religious and spiritual life is the same…

Stephen Pritchard outlines a brief history of art, property and artwashing, and calls on us to take art back from the capitalists – in all their guises. Art has always been a form of property. During the Renaissance, art was the property of Royalty, the nobility and the church. It was…

The arts are just a part of the weapons of life. Art can make us see and feel reality and help change that reality. Art is revelation. Art is hard work. Art is part of protest.

Jayne Cortez

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

The most precious thing in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth.

Rosa Luxemburg
Letters from Prison

The individual will reach full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken. This will be translated concretely into the reconquering of one's true nature through liberated labor, and the expression of one's own human condition through culture and art,